Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has moved to end future leasing in a large swath of the Powder River Basin – America’s top coal-producing region.
On Thursday, Biden’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposed to effectively ban future leasing in a sizable portion of the coal-rich geologic formation covering parts of Wyoming and Montana.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Powder River Basin provided about 43 percent of the coal produced in the U.S. in 2019.
The BLM published a final plan after considering alternative options.
The other options would have maintained the status quo or limited, but not ended, future coal leasing activity in the area.
However, the federal agency opted to move forward with the “no leasing” proposal.
According to the final impact statement’s text, the proposal would “[make] no BLM-administered coal available for leasing within the planning area.”
Environmentalist organizations and green agenda advocates cheered the move.
Many celebrated the BLM’s decision to keep 6 billion tons of coal in the ground.
The area covered by BLM’s decision Thursday is confined to northeast Wyoming.
It includes parts of Gillette, Wyoming.
Jeremy Nichols, a senior advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, was among those green